Złożony układ osadniczy - tradycyjny region ekonomiczny - przestrzeń społeczno-kulturowa

Abstract

This study attempts to indicate the most essential determining factors of development and transformation in the economic region understood as complex settlement pattern characterised by both the specificity of processes and sociocultural structures: Particular attention is devoted to: ‒ firstly – the differentiation of elementary notions pertaining to the changeability of phenomena over time (development vs. growth, regression vs. decrease) in the context of evolving forms of spatial settlement; ‒ secondly – the relationship between the economic base and the three-sector model of economy in regions of traditional industry as compared with a single city; ‒ thirdly – the variety of a city’s surroundings in a region of traditional industry; ‒ fourthly – the complexity of social structure in a region of traditional industry; ‒ fifthly – the multidimensional development of awareness and identity in a region of traditional industry that is simultaneously a border region; ‒ sixthly – the socio-cultural integration and disintegration processes as observed in nomenclature, language, the ownership of public space, socio-cultural landscape, as well as shaping of divided and no-man’s lands; ‒ seventhly – an attempt was made to approach in broader and more contemporary way the C.D. Harris and L. Ullman’s multiple nuclei model (1945). The comparative studies in monocentric urban agglomerations vs. the polycentric ones carried out over the recent years suggest that – regardless of the genetic developmental determinants – there are multiple structural and functional divergences between them (Kłosowski, Runge, Prokop, 1996). What is most commonly indicated as essential in the polycentric urban agglomerations are coincidence and functional fragmentation, multiplier effects, or differences in directions of scalar and vector changes (Runge, 2015). However, the main issue demanding a response from a researcher is whether the structural and functional discrepancies between the monocentric and polycentric urban agglomerations stem from differences in their magnitude scale, the degree of phenomena concentration, that is, the discrepancy in terms of quantity, or rather from qualitative discrepancy relating to socio-economic processes and structures and the spatial features of the said settlement patterns.